Are You An Award Loser? Learn How to Become a Winner

Are You Frustrated With Joining Design Awards and Competitions, Spending Your Time and Effort Yet Always Getting Nothing? Don&#039;t Be

If you have joined design awards and competitions but had never won any design awards, you might be questioning yourself whether if there are some things going on behind the scenes, or if these competitions might be rigged etc. In some cases, there really are things going on and in some cases, you are missing some important points.You have right to ask all these questions and here are some of the rules you should follow in order to win an award your next design competition entry, but before that lets discriminate internal and external factors of losing, and convert them into winning factors instead.External Factors of losing: You might be losing design awards because you might be joining some unfair awards where the winners are already selected even before the competition begins. This is a common issue in some association or government supported competitions where the winners are usually are from a close circle of friends. If you feel that the design award or competition is rigged, it is rigged. Do not join competitions that require you to book a table at gala-night for several thousands of euros. Do not join competitions that do not offer any services. Do not join competitions where contact details are not present. Do not join awards where there are no promises.Another external factor that you could avoid is to join awards that asks you to pay money after you win the award, in order to claim your award. This happens in several ways: You might need to pay one or multiple of the following: The Gala-Night, The Exhibition, The Yearbook and even to claim that you are a winner, to use the logo etc.It is strange to note that the famous and well known RedDot Design Award and If Design Award are such competitions. You will be losing your opportunity of winning their awards if you do not pay these prestigious design competitions several thousand euros after results announced. Now, that you know it, you might be more careful about what you are signing when joining awards.I will not go further into a discussion of how people get ripped of by some awards, but I will now provide some internal factors and suggestions, that you could follow to increase your chances of winning any design awards and becoming successful design award winners. Here are the rules of thumbs for winning a design award.Inner factors of winning: Only the best entries wins design awards, but not only that, the entries should be both good and original. Remember that the jurors reputation is at stake when judging your entry, therefore competitions with better jury will be even harder to win. Make sure you present unique and interesting projects.Clearly presented; if you have spent hours and hours for your project, your project deserves the same kind of attention for the presentation. Make sure that your project is very clearly presented to the jury. Spend your time in explaining the design and why it is different from other designs. Remember that if they understand it better, they will like it more.Describe your project without the following words: Innovative, Breakthrough, Incredible, Great, Best, Timeless etc. Your purpose is to explain your design in a clear manner, do not write as if you are preparing an advertisement to the jury. The best way to advertise to the jury is to be clear and transparent about your work. But still, no need tell apparent drawbacks or defects if any.It is best to use photographs which shows the design in a contextual way such as an action shot showing the product in use, or a photography where your project, service etc is being used. Make sure people in this photos are relevant audience for your design project and they look happy or content for interacting with your product, service or project.Mutliple Submissions; you can submit your designs into multiple categories, i.e. if you have a product, it could win a packaging award or functionality award etc. You can even submit your project to same competition twice or at different times especially if the jury changes annually, as different jurors will have different aesthetic preferences.Make sure your are eligible, many people lose design competitions because their submission is indeed ineligible. For instance including your logo or name in the design submission or presentation is always a negative thing and should never be done as it is usually forbidden to have your logo in the presentation. You should use also the least amount of text you could to explain your design. Try to think how you would be explaining your design if you would be given only 150 chars to communicate it. Make sure that people understand your design and its function immediately and easily. Include close-ups, details, schematics, section views etc as required.Design awards are not beauty contests, make sure that your design is also functional and the function is clearly communicated. You did a crazy looking chair, so what? It is more important to make a crazy looking yet super ergonomic chair, that people enjoy. Work in this direction and do not submit art pieces to design competitions unless there is a category for them.Quality of images are very important when joining design competitions that requires you to submit photos or images online as they cannot evaluate your design by seeing it, visiting it or touching it. Therefore have your products photographed professionally, and have your projects rendered perfectly and then join competitions. This is important also after the competition; press will also require better images for publication.Description is really important, providing a description of your design will help the jury to understand it better, and thus evaluate it definitively more positive due to familiarity effect. Remember, people will vote negatively if they do not understand your design, they will just vote negatively.If you truly want to win a design award, join multiple competitions, there can be free and paid competitions; local awards, national prized and international design competitions. You will need a budget for participation fees and time for preparing presentation and submitting your design.If you do not want to loose a design competition, first of all don&#039;t get eliminated. Read the entry instructions and terms carefully. In addition, why not ask some of your friends about how they really think about your entry, so that if they don&#039;t like it you might have time to improve the presentation before submitting it to a design award.Final Tip: No matter which competition you are going to join, you can upload your works to A&#039; Design Award to utilize their free preliminary checking service; this service gives your design a score between 0 to 10, and it is a free way to get 3rd party insights about your design before nominating it to any design awards or competitions.Exerpt:If you have joined design awards and competitions but had never won any design awards, you might be questioning yourself whether if there are some things going on behind the scenes, or if these competitions might be rigged etc. In some cases, there really are things going on and in some cases, you are missing some important points.You have right to ask all these questions and here are some of the rules you should follow in order to win an award your next design competition entry, but before that..